An outstanding film noir melodrama whose adultery
tale is
much in
the same nature as a Hitchcock mystery or James M.
Cain's gritty Double
Indemnity. Philandering playboy Larry Ballentine is on
trial for
murdering
his girlfriend Verna Carlson. His lawyer, Cahill,
excuses him as a man
of poor character, but tells the court that when Larry
tells his story
they will see that he's not a murderer.

Larry's true confession starts on a hot NYC June
afternoon,
where
the married man is meeting the attractive magazine
writer Janice Bell
for
lunch the last 11 weeks and is planning to leave his
rich wife for her.
But his society wife, Gretta, has found out about the
restaurant
rendezvous
and buys him a limited partnership in a Beverly Hills
stock brokerage
firm
with Mr. Trenton. The spineless Larry dumps the nice
girl Janice for
the
money. The scorned Janice now detests him. In LA Larry
meets his soul
mate,
a sexy and cunning office worker in his firm, Verna
Carlson. He has
this
great line upon meeting her: "She was a special kind
of dynamite neatly
wrapped in nylon and silk... But I was powder shy."

Gretta finds out about his affair with Verna and she
plans
to keep
him by selling his interest in the partnership and
relocating to a
remote
ranch. Speaking about a heavy dose of symbolism, her
only companion at
the ranch is a palomino stallion with a sweet tooth
for sugar.

Larry is not happy on the ranch feeling he's kept by
a
jailer, and
talks Verna into turning down Trenton's marriage offer
and running off
with him to Reno, Las Vegas. He promises to get a
divorce and start
over
with her. But their car is hit accidentally by a truck
that explodes upon
contact and Verna is burned to death. He's
hospitalized with a
concussion.
When the authorities believe that it was his wife who
died, he goes
along
with that story and starts to make other plans.

Warning: spoiler to follow in
next
paragraph.

The film builds to a cleverly devised twisty ending.
Larry
comes
home to the ranch and finds that Gretta committed
suicide with his
letter
asking for a divorce by her side. He leaves her body
by the canyon to
decompose,
but by a strange twist of fate the police show up on
the request of
Trenton.
He's worried about his missing girlfriend and thinks
she's blackmailing
Larry. The police find an unrecognizable body and
believe it's Verna.
The
last twist is over the jury verdict and how the
guilt-ridden Larry
reacts
before the verdict is announced.

Robert Young is fun to watch for a change playing a
scoundrel. Susan
Hayworth gives a solid femme fatale performance. Jane
Greer is a good
contrast
to Rita Johnson, as both are prepared to do what they
can to keep their
man. Jane's best virtue is her looks, while Rita's is
the obsessive
love
she has for the Robert Young character. There were too
many
contrivances,
especially the too clever of a twist at the end, but
overall it was
effective
as a suspenseful tale laced with sweet and sour
touches. It was
directed
with deft skill by Irving Pichel, something he rarely
achieves. It was
adapted from a story by Gordan McDonell and the
screenplay was by
Jonathan
Latimer.